AI:? not so much

Surfing blogrolls on other blogs, I found this 20 questions "AI." I won at pretty much every one of the 20 Q "games" I thought of. The last one, I would argue, I was very close to winning. I was thinking of a yellow rose, and it said "a flower" so technically it was right, but it was not very specific. It has this list of "contradictions" at the end where it looks at what you answered to a specific question and gives its answer for it. One of the questions it asked me was, "do you know any songs about it?" because it was a yellow rose, I do, in fact, know "The Yellow Rose of Texas." But I'm sure there have to be plenty of other songs about roses and/or flowers. The "AI" said that it was doubtful I knew songs about it. Well Mr. Snobby-bad guesser, a lot you know!!

The trouble with the computerized version of things like this is that really, it's random knowledge strings. It's not really intelligence that you're finding, although I can imagine a program that does, eventually, develop the ability to see grey areas. A number of the answers to the questions were best seen in shades of grey-- and they did have the option to say "maybe" or "sometimes" about some questions, but there are some things that are just situationally dependent that an "either/or" binary question cannot, and will not, be able to reason.

But it was still sort of fun to play. I picked some fairly random items that are on my desk. It really got thrown by my brass Kuan Yin statue... it kept guessing things like "stapler" or "hole puncher". Hah! No sirree bob. Another thing that made me laugh was the question "Will it burn" about my Wonder Woman Barbie. Well I said "Yes." Of course it will burn-- it's not made of asbestos or something. It's not a natural property of it to burn, but if I lit it on fire, it would quite certainly burn. It "argued" with me on that one, saying that it thought the answer to that question was "no." Well, I wouldn't want to burn it; I love my Wonder Woman Barbie. But when I was a five year old girl, the neighbor boy set his back yard and shed on fire burning toys-- he was crashing toy trains together. So toys will certainly burn, and if you have a deviant kid with a little time on his hands, it isn't unlikely that they will think of that option. Beevises of America, unite! :)

Anyway. So much for Saturday diversions. Watched the last half of Love Actually for the 20th time (I love that silly little movie). Ate breakfast. As of now, I'm still in my PJs (almost past noon! woooo hoooo!). Once again, my hubby is out of town till Sunday. He's such a good hard working boy, trying to get all his summer military obligations out of the way before the babies come so that we can spend weekends together once we double in size, family-wise. So maybe a little "girl time" playing later this afternoon. Maybe I should go shopping or something. (What I really should do is work on the Buffy chapter, but it's the weekend!!) So the AI diverted my attention for about ten minutes, altogether.

Now, perhaps sometime productive. But perhaps not.